Prop 8 on California Ballot: Gay Marriage

A couple weeks ago I had dinner with a friend who delivered an impassioned critique of the most visible item on California’s ballot in November — Proposition 8 — and asked for support for the No on 8 campaign. I told him I’d study the issue and blog what I learned. Even if you do not live in California, if you believe in civil rights it is something you should be following because its passage or defeat will affect the momentum of similar initiatives around the country. If you do live in California but are not gay (like me) and think it doesn’t matter, think again.

Here’s what the Initiative is:

Changes the California Constitution to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry in California.

Provides that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.

Currently, gay marriage is legal in California thanks to a State Supreme Court ruling in May. It is also legal in Massachusetts and Connecticut. If Prop 8 passes in November, the State Constitution will be amended to ban gay marriages and undo existing benefits currently offered to same-sex, married couples.

Some people oppose gay marriage because they oppose homosexuality. There’s no point arguing with people about gay marriage if, at their core, they believe being gay is a sin (or even a choice or “lifestyle decision”).

Then there are those who do not oppose homosexuality but oppose gay marriage. I’ve heard three main arguments from these people:

1. Gay marriage harms the institution of marriage (and children). “Once we abandon marriage to the whims and desires of adults seeking validation of their sexual lifestyles, we denigrate children and their needs – legally validating relationships that would deliberately leave them motherless or fatherless.” Say what? The idea that homosexual marriages threaten heterosexual couples is just absurd. Gays have married legally in California, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, and I don’t see any straight couples’ lives falling apart. The most coherent point in this vein is that children who are raised by gay couples are harmed by not having a daddy or mommy. Yet data around kids being worse off when raised by a mother-mother or father-father couple are questionable at best.

2. Gay marriage will lead to polygamy. Here’s the logic. Currently marriage rests upon two assumptions: it’s man and woman and one-to-one. Ie, one man and one woman. If you re-define the “man and woman” part (man and man or woman and woman) why can’t you re-define the one-to-one part? Who says one man and two women who all love each other dearly shouldn’t be able to marry? Here’s a good Charles Krauthammer column which explains this logic. A longer Weekly Standard article is subtitled “Plural marriage is waiting in the wings.” I have to study this more, but I’m sympathetic to William Saletan’s response to Krauthammer (and others) which is that one-to-one is not arbitrary but rooted in human nature — hence the frequency of polygamous unions breaking up. I would also imagine that the abuse so common in polygamous unions would produce society-wide negative externalities in ways gay marriages do not.

3. Children will be taught about gay marriage in schools. This issue has grabbed the headlines in the California Prop 8 campaign. The Yes on 8 side (again — this is “yes” to ban gay marriage, not “yes” to gay marriage) has been bombing the State with TV ads such as this which say Prop 8 will make it so even elementary school kids will learn that men can marry men. It’s true that California’s education code says that if sex ed is taught to students in the classroom, it ought to include curriculum on marriage and cannot discriminate on sexual orientation (ie, must list gay marriage as an option). But it’s also true that if a public school is going to teach sex ed, they must notify parents beforehand, show the content that will be taught, and allow parents to opt their child out of sex ed. So — gay marriage can be taught in sex ed, but since parents can opt-out nothing is being forced on children. Hence, Yes on 8’s scare ads are deceptive.

Those who support gay marriage — and therefore oppose Prop 8 — have their own set of arguments. The two that most resonate with me are:

1. Keep government out of private life. Good libertarians would say, “Why is the government amending the constitution to regulate individual behavior that does not negatively impact others?” It’s a little more complicated of course. Here are twopages which more clearly define this position (and distinguish between civil and religious law), and here’s an amusing satirical video ad about the government becoming “gender auditors.”

2. Maintain California’s — and America’s — competitive advantage by welcoming all people and promoting a culture of tolerance. Richard Florida has somewhat famously used openness to gays and gay culture as one proxy for predicting the overall competitiveness of an area: “When [talented entrepreneurs or engineers] are sizing up a new company and community, acceptance of diversity and of gays (and lesbians) in particular is a sign that reads ‘non-standard people welcome here.’ ” Here’s an op/ed that has more. I suspect this is one reason why California’s governor and the mayors of the three biggest cities, as well as many Silicon Valley CEOs I know, all are voting No on 8.

There are far better analyses and articles on this issue. I’m simply relaying what I’ve learned and letting you know which side I’ve come down on: No on 8! Unfortunately, No on 8 lags in financing. Much of the other side’s money has come from out of state and from Mormons. Another twist is Obama’s candidacy — it will likely bring blacks and other minorities to the polls in record numbers, but these groups also tend to be the most homophobic. Current polls suggest Prop 8 is in a dead heat.

Bottom Line: Vote No on Prop 8 if you live in California. If you live outside of California, contribute financially or by emailing your California friends. It’s important to keep out actively homophobic and discriminatory language from our constitution and keep in the state the people and culture which make this place so great.

On the contrary, much of the disdain I have for the decision has little to do with my opinion of homosexuals, but rather my view of democracy — namely that the people retain the right to the definitions of their social institutions. What could be more libertarian than the notion that institutions are a precious and fragile thing that ought to only be changed after careful reflection and consideration?

If you accept the judicial rational of the Supreme Court of California on issue, you must by extension favor all types of definition by courts, including those of Korematsu and Dredd Scott. After all, the Court that can define new rights for you can just as easily take them away. If history is any indication, then courts that define new rights seldom stop whenever they feel it necessary to limit them.

I believe that the people of California could have just as easily voted on the issue for themselves and come to the proper decision — that homosexuals ought to have the right to marry– without the Court’s guarding us from deliberation.

At least, that’s why I shall be voting “Yes.”

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Finally, gays may want to reconsider voting for court-provided gay marriage as current law on partner benefits would become overturned such that any gay couples living together and unwilling to get married may lose their health insurance.

In Massachusetts just that happened.

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While I’m pro-gay marriage, I think you didn’t address the only criticism with merit of gay marriage – that marriage is an established tradition, firmly rooted in religion. Forget the slippery-slope arguments, forget the it’ll turn more kids gay argument. I find those arguments without merit, and ignorant. It’s just that marriage traditionally has two parts: legal and religious. This is what “harming the institution of marriage” actually means. I’d say that opponents of gay marriage who operate on this assumption believe that legalizing gay marriage imposes on the purview of religion. That’s risky to do, especially for the state. However, I am pretty sure that the number of anti-gay marriage people that feel that way is a tiny proportion of the total population. I’m also sure that you can believe in that argument and not be anti-gay.

We have to use the state to recognize unions between two people for legal reasons, like taxes and survivor benefits, so why not just do civil unions for homosexual relationships? I’d argue it’s the familiar separate-but-equal argument. Even if heterosexuals actually see no difference between marriage and civil unions, gays will interpret it as not being treated the same as heterosexuals. We changed from Plessy v. Furguson to Brown v. Board of Education; now let’s observe the equal protection clause of the fourteenth without discrimination.

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Addendum: There’s also plenty of evidence that gays may not want to get married and so it makes little sense to overturn such an institution.

As Stanley Kurtz put it, “In Norway, same-sex registered partnerships form only .68 percent as often as heterosexual marriages. In Sweden, registered partnerships form only .55 percent as often as heterosexual marriages (i.e. about one half of 1 percent as often). The symbolic effect of registered partnerships on the meaning of Scandinavian marriage has been great — stimulating major national debates that continue to drag on (over issues like gay adoption, and rainbow flags on churches). But the actual number of Scandinavian registered partners is exceedingly small — even taking into account that gays represent only a few percent of the population.”

Perhaps more interesting is the idea that homosexual men have a 50% higher rate of divorce than married men and that homosexual women have a 170% higher divorce rate, leading two European demographers to call this “super risk of divorce.” (link to nationalreview.com)

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Oh give it a rest, Charles. Your Norwegian statistics are irrelevant in a world where Britney Spears can get married for 24 hours. Vote Yes if you want, but making the claim that “gays may not want to get married” is no more persuasive than acknowledging that some straights may not want want to get married. There is a solution to that problem: don’t get married.

Meanwhile, I see no compelling reason to deny marriage to Ellen Degeneres, Dan Savage and Andrew Sullivan.

People who use drugs recreationally are at a higher risk of getting addicted, but I still support legalization on libertarian grounds.

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You believe gays ought to be able to marry but you’re taking some principled stand on the judicial process?

The constitutional amendment process was started by gay marriage opponents. I see No on 8 as simply trying to protect the constitution from an assault that would specifically deny rights to a certain group of people.

I’ve never heard of the “pull your kid out of sex ed and get arrested” story in Mass. I don’t know what the law is there — but in California that won’t happen because it’s not the law here.

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I really have to laugh at these Palinesque fundamentalist morons who are so worried about their children being exposed to sex education– apparently they never bothered to actually read their holy book.

All normal human values are reversed in the strange world of those pages.

When the lustful, horny men of Sodom want Lot to give up those good-looking angel dudes he’s got inside his house, what does the proud father do? He offers them his virgin daughters instead.

Isn’t that what any loving father would do?

When Lot and his family flee the impending destruction of the city, his poor wife gets turned into a pillar of salt for taking one last look at her homeplace. That’ll show ya, you impudent little human.

How dare you do something so terrible.

But of course, that isn’t horrible and twisted enough for the author of this sordid tale.

Lot’s two daughters get him drunk on wine, on successive nights, and have sex with him, because they’re worried they’ll never have kids, there being no willing, jism-full lads in all the land to do the job.

Yeah, the old bastard isn’t too drunk to ejaculate, but he’s too drunk to remember what happened the next day, two nights in a row.

So he knocks up both his own daughters.

You realize if you pitched this shit in Hollywood, they’d toss you out the door, right, unless it was comedy?

The real killer of it all is that the Big Guy up in the sky was pissed at Sodom and Gomorrah for their sexual perversions.

See, everything makes perfect sense when you just look at it the believers’ way.

You’d better be good, you sick fucking humans.

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Anyone know what will happen to the people already in a gay / lesbian marriage? And, what will happen to the Canadians that have their spouse filling out the I 130 Visa? Is the marriage going to be annulled?

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If you really want to be educated on this topic and make an informed decision then you first have to really examine why states recognize marriage in the first place. Why not just leave it as a social construct like a Catholic confirmation or a Jewish Bar Mitzva?

Why does the state give tax credits for dependents?

First one would say tradition. But why has this been tradition?

In my view our current society has been birthed by not just by luck and a few smart men aka the founding fathers. But an underlying social and cultural fabric (That is why certain truths are held to be self evident).

The deliberate and systematic removal of these social values is having a negative impact on our competitive advantage as a society. One could argue that our current financial mess is due to this brand of “equality” that was the foundation of our mortgage lending standards promoted by the GSEs(Government Sponsored Enterprises… Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae).

The fall Rome is believed to have been caused by similar amoral behavior.

I understand the leave and let live philosophy but, frankly, culture matters.

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States recognize marriage because it is a tradition that gives us a convenient way to deal with family rights, property, and inheritance from a legal standpoint. Unless gays are banned from property ownership they need an identical mechanism. The problem is that marriage comes with a mess of religious and social baggage that people should not be expected to give up. The solution: take marriage away from everyone, gays and straight people. The government can only grant civil unions to anyone and your social institution of choice gives you “marriage.” This solves the problem by taking the government out of “marriage.”

One might say, “if it is only a matter of words why not force homosexuals to have civil unions and let straight people have marriage.” In changing the words you separate the institutions and while they will initially be “separate but equal” it would likely allow a legal loophole backed by the social notion of the difference to change the rights homosexuals receive. The government cannot grant “marriage” to one group and not the other. So until my solution is implemented everyone gets to be “married” in the eyes of the state.

Equality under the law and forced equality of result are not the same thing. Unless you believe poverty is genetic.

Comfort with homosexuality existed during both the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. Culture matters but there are plenty of American cultural traditions we are glad to rid ourselves of.

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Mike, I don’t exactly get the “self-evident” part of your argument. If I understand you correctly, you are blaming both the Fall of Rome and the subprime mortgage crisis on gay marriage… Is that why you support Proposition 8?

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You said: Mike, I don’t exactly get the “self-evident” part of your argument.

You put a lot of words into my mouth.

Perhaps you should read the Declaration of Independence.

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. –That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”

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Paul, how should a gay man who entered a civil union introduce his mate at a party? “this is Bob, my legally recognized domestic partner” or “this is my husband Bob”?

Are “husband” and “wife” out of bounds too, or just “marriage”? Come to think about it, I think I say “wife” many more times than I say “marriage,” so perhaps future amendments can outlaw that too.

As to Mike’s comment about “underlying social fabric,” I invite you to grow up in the south, as I did, and explain how awesome those cultural traditions were for black people, even post Civil Rights Act. Bonus points if you can name the phrase used to describe a white woman who dated a black man. Ever hear of Loving v. Virginia?

Jeez, it was only in this century that laws against sodomy were finally struck down.

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I agree with Jeff that there are many cultural traditions that we have happily rid ourselves from.

However I do believe that modifying one of the cornerstones of our culture does have an impact on everyone and does diminish the establishment of marriage. Just like when the feds decide to print $700 Billion, it causes inflation which reduces all of our wealth.

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I’m a legally married gay man. No one’s trying to “change the definition of marriage” any more than the civil rights movement tried to “change the definition of water fountains” by passing laws so that blacks could drink at formerly whites-only fountains.

That’s the bottom line, and the rest is cover for homophobia, no matter how fancy and intricate the designs on that cover are.

Don’t want the state involved in marriage? I didn’t notice you picketing straight marriages before this issue came up. Don’t want judges making these kinds of decisions? If desegregation had been left to the popular vote, black kids would still be getting lynched for trying to go to white schools. Want your kids to grow up in a healthy, loving environment? Make sure they see healthy, loving relationships celebrated in public ceremonies.

I’m grateful that I was able to marry my wonderful partner of 15 years, and having been able to do so has provided uncountable blessings in our lives.

Maybe someday, if the likes of McCain and Palin aren’t elected, we’ll even have equal marriage benefits at the federal level. But for now, I’m happily married.

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Mike, which do you think will have a greater impact on children – that $700 billion or gay marriage? I assume you’re opposed to both, but thinking about 20, 30, 40 years from now, in what ways will your children’s lives be impacted by each?

My bet is that they’ll have to pay a lot higher taxes, but will look back on the gay marriage debate the way we now look back on the civil rights era – as the “obvious” direction of history. They’ll be more pissed about the former, but there will be a few cranks who want to turn back to the clock.

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“It’s important to keep out actively homophobic and discriminatory language from our constitution and keep in the state the people and culture which make this place so great.”

@Ben – Right on the money with the last line of this post, and kudos for (so logically) exploring both sides of the argument.

Side note: Given that Gay Marriage is one of those topics that instills fire in so many (conservative and liberal alike), of interest is a recently-posted lecture on TED given by Jonathan Haidt on moral psychology and what key personality traits (from the standpoint of developmental psychology) make us lean towards being (socially) conservative and liberal, and how we can overcome our natural tendencies toward self-righteousness and see the value in others’ viewpoints. While the lecture doesn’t directly address the issue of Gay Marriage, it’s got some valuable insights for anyone who’s first instinct is to immediately jump into an “I’m right and you’re wrong” position. Haidt points out that changing social institutions like this one requires us to actually change people to solve (societal) problems, and he encourages us to see past our own positions and cultivate a little moral humility. Anyone feeling anger towards someone because of ideological opposition should take the 20 minutes and watch the lecture.

I find it amusing and disgusting that you guys call me just short of racist.

Marriage is more than simply a commitment between two people. Marriage is the basic building block of our society. The bond of marriage is also a bond with our community to produce offspring that will further the prosperity of the community.

Marriage isn’t a natural institution, it’s a cultural one. If most guys had their way they’d try and ‘procreate’ with as many women as possible.

sigh

Perhaps we should just legalize prostitution? Why not it is just two consenting adults engaging in a financial transaction.

You know there are many young people that are responsible enough to drink alcohol, perhaps we should lower the age limit or have some sort of standardized test for adolescents to declare maturity.

While we are at it if a minor can declare themselves mature why not allow them to legally enter into a sexual relationship (heck, my great grandmother had kids at the age of 14, why are we so pretentious now?)

If a boy recognizes the fact that he is gay, shouldn’t he have the right to be represented through organizations like NAMBLA and all they stand for?

You know many people are quite fond of their pets. Perhaps there should be some sort of legal recognition of such a relationship.

I know you think my list of arguments are absurd but how long ago was it that gay marriage would have been on this absurd list? What part of OUR culture will be perverted next to push through the next absurd ‘barrier.’

I find it funny that people often shout “Look how many strait people get divorced! Ha and they want to stop two loving homosexuals from committing to each other! How dare they!”

Well, ok. Lets get rid of no fault divorce laws. I’m all for that. Once no fault divorce was legalized the divorce rate shot through the roof. I’m sure no fault divorce would have seem absurd at one time too.

Yes there have been and still are many things in our culture that need to be removed, racism is definitely one of them.

Personally I see this as a Marxist affront to our values. Karl Marx declared that marriage is merely “legalized private prostitution” to control the human “means of production.” What better way to do away with it than to weaken it through redefinition.

Mr. Marx would rather not have parents teaching the kids. That is a job for the state.

Another scary thought is that in an earlier post Charles Johnston spoke about the abuse of the Judicial system and the response back to him was complacency of a governmental body usurping the power of the people, sad and truly scary stuff.

Of course, you can not doubt Karl Marx… he said so himself:

“The charges against Communism made from a religious, a philosophical and, generally, from an ideological standpoint, are not deserving of serious examination. ”

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The question is, why do gay ppl want gay marriage recognized, and what defines marriage as such? If they want a title of married couple, having marriage contract, being counted as one household in census or whatever, I am fine with it.
However, government give married ppl financial incentives such as lower taxes, and that is because either (1) these marriages create certain fabric of society rooted in tradition, as someone else has mentioned (2) because marriage provides framework for reproduction and successful rearing of offsprings. Reproduction that is important to the USA and especially Europe now with declining birth rates and aging population. Gay marriage provides neither, so I don’t see why government should support it.
My opinion? Marriage – sure, economic benefits – no. Otherwise, as an almost-asexual, I demand the right to marry myself and get a tax break.

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Would you prefer your children to be straight or gay? (Probably straight; said in another way, if you could only have one child, you would probably want him to be straight, all other factors considered equal). In the same way, would you prefer your parents to be straight or gay? (Probably straight).

But a huge difference is that you can always have more kids in our society. You can’t “have” more parents. You’re parents are your parents, and there’s nothing you can really do to change that.

Let’s say a kid finds out that he has two moms, and that that’s not normal. Does society have the right to tell him: “Too bad. Unfortunately you’re not going to have a biological father who is home and takes care of you. Get over it.” (There’s a reason why the nuclear family in which the parents are man and woman is the main unit of society. It works.) Don’t underestimate social institutions that have been around for hundreds of years…if they were fatally flawed, they wouldn’t be around anymore (like natural selection, if a species was unfit, it wouldn’t be here anymore).

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At the risk of invoking the pigmental counterpart to Godwin’s Law, I sigh when I think about how many of the arguments against gay marriage were used against interracial marriage up until the Supreme Court decision in the late 1960s. Destroys the institution of marriage? Check. Flies in the face of millennia of tradition? Check. They’ll be teaching kids to do it? Check. I was 7 or 8 when the ruling was handed down, and it was all the adults could talk about for weeks.

We’ve come a long way, baby. Oh, wait, no we haven’t!

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Imo it’s fundamentally different. These marriages can still have children so supporting them is economically viable. There are also fundamental gender roles in nature, no matter how modern social engineers try to show they are not important, however, there are no “racial roles”, and racial differences, even if they exist on level other than physical, can be regarded as local adaptations of peoples to past conditions at best, so they are not important in modern society.

Various people have various agendas against gay marriage, but economically and perhaps naturally they have no right to exist in the same framework as “normal” marriage… Title – sure, but implementation needs to be somewhat different.

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THE ‘REAL’ REASON FOR ‘YES’ ON 8
While some are arguing for Yes on 8, they are not making themselves clear to those with less knowledge on the subject.

As one who absolutely loves Ellen Degeneres (sp) as much as I do, and I really, really do, why would I vote against something she so despertly wants.

As I read these comments on gay marriage I am also watching this same discussion on ‘The View’. Unfortunately, no matter ‘where’ this topic is being discussed it’s always ‘the blind’ leading ‘the blind’. Yes, unfortunately, even the ladies on The View are blind.
The initial point ‘here’ was the fact that the judges
are using their power to overturn the public’s vote. THIS IN FACT IS WHERE THE FOCUS SHOULD STAY, as this is just the beginning (even though it is really 35 years late) of what some people can now see as ‘our government’ taking away the power of the people… and when the government is thru exercising their self-righteous power ‘all of us’ will be sorry, EVEN THE GAYS. At this point, however, many of the gays can’t see the forest for the trees (that they are actually being used) because ‘they’ are only focused on their own agenda. In other words… it’s all about ‘me’ and what I want, THEY’RE NOT EVEN THINKING OF THE CONSEQUENCES OF THEIR ACTIONS TO THEIR OWN FAMILIES.

Today, while more people are becoming aware that Government and Big Business are connected, very few people, however, are aware that that connection ‘really’ is Religion, History, Government and Big Business, with the first two actually recording the second two. AND BECAUSE SO FEW ARE AWARE OF THIS, this was how come ”our History'” had been re-written for us… which says so much for our “college degrees”, our blogs and even the ladies on The View. Most people are unaware that our sub-standard state-subsidized colleges were actually ‘designed’ to correspond with our sub-standard state-subsudized grade schools and middle schools. And, if one has enough money for a private college, well… there’s always those sports scholarships to pull them in. Even my daughter fell for that one. And now, the alumni are confronting this major school on their sub-standard diplomas, still unaware that this confrontation is going to go nowhere. Need I remind anyone that the state-subsudized college dipomas the gays are holding are no more worthy than any of the others.

The only part of the Bible (the ‘very first’ History Book) ‘anyone’ has to understand is The Book of Proverbs… that is where God speaks ‘directly to man’ in laymens’ terms, VS the confusing parabels that is so easy for ‘anyone’ to interpret to their own needs. And this means… you don’t need someone who ‘thinks’ he knows what God means to interpret for you, as this actually means… you’re getting the middle man (and most of the devil’s input) out of the way.

If one thinks of The Book of Proverbs as ‘The Book of Supidity’ one may even be reminded to count the number of times they run across ‘that actual word’, or a form of it. In a Catholic Bible one will see a form of the word ‘stupid’ 2 or 3 times; a Protestant Bible, even more; a Jewish Talmud, as much as 3 times on one page. The same goes for the Muslim Quran. (in other words… unless you’re agnostic or an atheist God has the subject of man’s stupidity covered).
Summed up… This is where God tells man… ‘You’ will not make a fool out of me, I will make a fool out of you. And simply because of the media today, we can all actually see exactly how that works, with the most stupid actually being naive enough to go before the general public to state what ‘they’ think on a subject; not what they know, but what they think. These are the same people who actually ‘think’ the Reformation is when Martin Luther saved us from the Pope. The same people who actually ‘think’ it was the governments who called for ‘the Separation of Church and State, when it was actually the church that told the governments… they wanted no part of their evil, and what they were doing to the people (only one of which was having people accuse their neighbors of being witches ‘before’ their neighbors could accuse them, and the matter of death was so deplorable it doesn’t need to be described here). And these unknowing people are going to tell the rest of us what ‘they think’ on any subject? These unknowing people, of course, don’t realize they are Sarah Palin all over again, simply because they don’t have the national spotlight on them. However, everything that has been typed, or taped so far can always be re-played for the public’s viewing if more interest should arise. Remember… WHILE WE ARE THE ONES GOING THROUGH THE MOTIONS, IT’S GOD WHO ACUALLY HAS EVERYTHING RECORDED, AND I MEAN E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G. In the end many of us could only wish people laughed at us for not knowing Africa was a continent… that that was our biggest ‘recorded’ mistake.

No matter what subject we are discussing, it’s not what we ‘think’ but what the other side ‘knows’. And maybe we should do our research to see whats behind what ‘they’ know. Communication, understanding and compromise is always the key… and maybe since Obama has shown how that works the rest of us will pick up on it.

The fact is… God doesn’t care what ‘we’ think. The day we create our own world (and all that is in it) will be the day what ‘we’ think’ will be important. Until then… we all will be held accountable for what we ‘do’, even as a group. Unfortunately, while BOTH THE BIBLE AND OUR HISTORY BOOKS have shown that nations had often been punished as a whole throughout centuries, some people don’t care about anyone but themselves… that’s the name of the game. But this is part of… LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELVES… if you don’t care about what happens to you because of ‘your’ actions, do you care about ‘your’ actions affecting your neighbor, even your own family members? When the answer is no, it’s because these people think of themselves as their own gods, accountable to no one.

I would surmise this ‘stupidity’ factor in the Quran is why Muslims have actually killed those who have left their religion for another. Not because ‘they’ think they have the only true religion, as they are fully aware they had originally come from the Jews) but to prevent what they feel to be paganistic traits creeping back into the fold (not just gay marriages, but pornoraphy, gambling, liquer stores, drugs and all that goes with it), and thus, bringing down God’s anger ‘on all’ for letting things get out of hand, destroying them all. They are thinking of the consequences of their actions as a whole, not as individuals. This is what UNITY means, and why the call for UNITY in the bible is repeated so often. United we stand, divided we fall.

HUMILITY is the name of the game in all of the major religions. This is why Jesus Christ rode into town on a donky and not a white stallion. Then he reminded the Çhristians… Imitate me.

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